Final Illness
by Marauder
Summary: The five last days in the life of Ennis Del Mar, age seventyone. As Ennis moves closer and closer to death, Jack moves closer and closer to him.
1. Chapter 1

"One hundred and one. Daddy?"

"Hmm?"

"It's one hundred and one."

He could see her shaking the thermometer, turning to the little wooden stand-up tray she'd put next to his bed. He'd bought that tray himself, from someone's yard sale, when she and Jenny'd been sick as little girls. Another place to set down the endless bottles, half-gone boxes of tissues, and little bags of candy he'd get them when they were laid up sick in bed. Seemed like they'd always got sick at the same time, about, Junior and Jenny, when they were little girls.

"You want me to bring you any more ginger ale?"

"No, s'all right." Just have to get up for the bathroom one, two more times.

"Kurt just went out for the mail, he says the new Newsweek's come in. You want me to bring you that?"

"You know I ain't much for reading, honey."

"Well, Daddy, you won't know that unless you put on those damn glasses you won't wear and try it for a change." They'd ganged up on him, Junior and Jenny, told him he'd been farsighted all his life and if he didn't get glasses soon he wouldn't be able to see his hand in front of his face. The eye doctor had looked like a boy to him, a short kid with a face so smooth Ennis wondered if he even had to shave it.

"You got any more of them pills?"

"It says on the bottle you can't take any for another two hours."

And that was that, he knew, she wasn't going to let him have any more until the exact second the clock said she could. He'd never bothered to read the labels of those bottles in his life, except once years ago when Alma had had the flu and asked him to find her something in the medicine cabinet. He'd taken them when he felt like he needed them, and here he was, seventy-one years old and never done any harm by taking too many pills. Not that he was like those people you heard about on the news these days, taking pills for every little thing they thought was wrong with them. Never touched the things unless he felt like sick roadkill run over twice.

"I sent Alma out to get you some more cough drops, she ought to be back in a couple of minutes." Kurt had done like Ennis himself had done years ago, named his first daughter after his wife. Third. Seventeen years old now, not born until her mother was into her thirties. They'd waited years and years to have kids, Junior and Kurt, hadn't had any until Kurt had saved up enough money to start college, gone, and paid back all his student loans. Student loans. Should have been student loans years ago, would have let Ennis get the truck fixed and gone to his sophomore year.

They'd talked about school once, Jack and Ennis, sitting near the campfire, Jack leaning against an old dead tree and Ennis leaning against Jack. Jack had gotten into junior year of high school, had been thinking he was going to graduate until he got a D for the first half of the year in algebra and his daddy'd said, Well, boy, if this is the best you can do, no use keeping you in that school, now, is there? Jack's mother had tried to convince him otherwise, but the old man's word was law and Jack withdrew the day after his report card came home. His mother had wanted her only son to get through high school, to stand up on the bleachers in his best suit and get a piece of paper she could frame and put on the wall.

"How come you was their only kid?"

"Hell if I know. You think I asked? Maybe it was one of my mama's religion things."

"Naw, that can't be right," Ennis said. "Something in the Bible 'bout being fruitful and multiplyin'."

"Shit. Fucked up another thing in that book. Lureen and I ain't done it in three years, not since she found out she was pregnant with Bobby. She wasn't real interested while he was on the way, so I didn't try until he was about four months old. Said she was tired. Guess she been tired for three years, 'cause right now there's as much sex in our house as there is in a nunnery."

They'd looked out at the fire, crackling in the dark, the flames the only light they could see. There was no moon and the clouds had covered the stars, ready to rain any minute. Ennis thought he heard the slow roll of thunder in the distance.

Jack extricated himself from between Ennis and the tree, crouched beside Ennis and turned Ennis's wrist to see his watch. "Nearly midnight already. You wanna go to bed? Get up early in the morning, maybe get some use out of those fishing poles for once."

"Not yet," Ennis said. "I ain't tired – " and he pushed Jack onto the ground, climbed on top of him, kissed him hard on the mouth while his hands reached for the buttons of his shirt, listened with a smile on his face as Jack moaned and slid his hand between Ennis's legs.

Junior and Kurt had four kids: Ken, Third, Lizzie, and Luke, four tall, skinny kids all with red hair like their daddy, not a single one with Junior's hair, but not a single one with Kurt's eyes. The first three had eyes like their mama, but Luke, his eyes were so much like Alma's that it was almost as though they'd been plucked out of her head and put in his. Sometimes over dinner Ennis would ask Luke to pass him the butter or something else, and as he looked over to take it he'd see those Alma Beers eyes and hear her voice in his head, _Ennis, I've got to get to the store, I need you to wash the dishes in the sink before you head out for work. _He saw Alma at every holiday dinner and the odd time she dropped by the house, though usually Junior and Kurt went out to her place to visit. She was old now, bent over at a slight angle and with hair that she dyed but always looked gray at the roots; her voice was the same as always.

The door to Ennis's bedroom opened a crack, and he looked over to see a hand sticking in through the door and to hear Kurt's voice saying, "This was in the mail for your daddy, got stuck between the pages of Lizzie's magazine."

"Daddy? It's a letter from Mrs. Twist in Lightning Flat."

Ennis turned over, squinted at the light lavender envelope, part of the same cheap stationary that she'd been using for decades. "Could ya do me a favor and read it to me, honey?"

"Why don't you get those glasses of yours from the dresser top and read it yourself?"

"Floor spins when I stand up."

"All right then, fine." Junior sighed and sat down on the wooden chair and worked back a corner of the envelope flap, ripped a strip off the top and took out the paper inside. "This handwriting of hers looks like a bunch of dead spiders. 'Dear Ennis, I am doing fine for a lady of my age who the Lord could take at any time. Things have not – ' Junior paused and brought the letter closer to her face, turned her head a bit ' – changed very much since last you wrote. I spend most of the days knitting if my hands aren't bothering me and watching the television if they are. One thing that has changed is that Bobby and Melissa – ' who're Bobby and Melissa?"

"Bobby's Jack's boy," Ennis said. "Melissa…Melissa's his wife, I think, if I 'member right."

"'Bobby and Melissa have had a little boy, so now I am a great-grandmother. They have named him Robert Twist Junior, juniors running in our family with the men as they do in yours with the girls. Jack was a junior as well, though he never wrote junior in his name.'"

It had taken Ennis seven years after meeting Jack to notice that, three years after he'd heard Jack talk about his daddy much at all. The two of them had been tying down the tent when Jack had laid his knife down on the ground for a moment and Ennis had seen the name John Charles Twist scratched into the metal of the handle. "That your daddy's knife?"

"What? No, that's mine. Rusty old piece of shit, in't it? Got it for my fifth birthday."

"John Charles Twist, that's you?"

"Yeah, that's me, friend. John Charles Twist Junior."

"Junior, huh?" He'd tied the last knot, flopped down on the ground next to where Jack sat. "Didn't know I had me a Junior at home and a Junior out here." Nudged Jack in the ribs. "You gonna scratch John Charles Twist on your harmonica too?"

"Shut up, Ennis." Jack said, but he was grinning in spite of himself, that grin that stirred something up in Ennis whenever he saw it, no matter what else was around them.

"'Robert Junior is a very sweet little boy, and Bobby and Melissa are wonderful parents, with the one exception that they have decided not to have him baptized in the Pentecostal Church.'"

Ennis felt a smile twitching on his lips, then coughed, staring up at the hazy, tilting ceiling.

"'I hope to hear back from you soon, as your letters are always a joy to me. Sincerely, Mrs. Ruth Twist.' Where do you want me to put this letter?"

"Aw, just set it down on this tray here. I think I'm gonna take a nap for a while." That ceiling didn't tilt on most days.

"You want me to wake you up when Alma comes back with your cough drops?"

"Not unless I cough in my sleep. Just let me sleep right through to when I wake up."


	2. Chapter 2

"Ennis. Hey. Ennis."

He woke up, or dreamed he woke up, to see Jack sitting on the wooden chair in the far corner of the room, which made him angry because it wasn't fair for his mind to pull this kind of trick on him when he was already felt as godawful as he did. "You ain't real," he said, glaring at the fever-dream Jack sitting in the patch of moonlight, his feet in their scuffed-up boots stretched out in front of him. "Now go away and let me sleep."

"You think I ain't real?"

"I _know_ you ain't real, 'cause since I got sick day before yesterday I already dreamed about Alma movin' to Mexico and taking the rest of the family with her and Cassie Cartwright showin' up at my door in a short red dress and beggin' me to marry her. I ain't seen Cassie in over thirty years and Alma, well, _she_ ain't the one who was keen on goin' to Mexico. Now get the hell out of my room."

"Got somethin' to tell ya, friend." Jack leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees and staring Ennis in the eye.

"Yeah? Well, I got somethin' to tell you, Jack fuckin' dream Twist, and that's that you can get – "

"Damn it, Ennis, shut up!" There was a determined look in his eye, the kind he'd had all those years back their last day together when they'd had that fight. "Look, I come here to tell you somethin' important, and the least you can do is shut the hell up and listen to me for one goddamn minute. I ain't got time to hear you bitch about whether you think I'm real or a dream or a goddamn hallucination, and neither do you. You got about four, five days to live."

They stared at each other, Ennis breathing quickly and deeply as though something heavy was sitting on his chest. He could feel a light sheen of sweat on his back, could feel a throbbing in his head like the fast throbbing of his heart under his ribs. "And then what? Then you come back to kill me?"

"_I_ ain't never threatened to kill nobody."

"You sayin' I did?"

"'All them things I don't know could get you killed if I should come to know them,' Ennis, that's what you said to me."

There was no arguing with that, and so Ennis didn't try: "Jack, you know I'd kill for you ten times sooner than I'd kill you."

"That's real sweet of you, friend."

"Yeah, well, goin' off to Mexico and doin' what we did with a bunch of whores was real sweet of _you_. That catch up with you?"

"Don't know what you mean."

"You're dead, ain't you? You have to come from Hell to see me, Jack? Or did ol' Water-Walking Jesus do his forgivin' and let you past the pearly gates?"

"You know what? I don't know," said Jack. "And you want to know why I don't know? Because I ain't gone nowhere, Ennis, I ain't gone nowhere except to do what I did for years 'fore I died, sit and wait for you to come away with me. I ain't in Heaven, I ain't in Hell, I ain't _nowhere_, except waiting on you, but you want to know the difference this time, Ennis? This time, ain't nothin' up to you. Whether you like it or not, death's catchin' up to you real fast, and then we're goin' to face what we gotta face together whether you like it or not. You got less than five days, and if you don't believe me, well, then you can sit around till the time comes and see if you believe me as your body's turnin' cold."

* * *

When he woke up it was morning, with the sounds of someone pouring cereal in the kitchen and a light that seemed too bright for human eyes glaring through the window. He sat up, looked around the room, saw that the wooden chair was still right by his bed where Junior'd left it, nowhere near the far corner.

Someone knocked on the door. "Grandpa? You awake?"

"Luke? That you?"

"Yeah, it's me. Mama says to ask you do you want anything for breakfast."

"Tell her I wouldn't mind whatever kind of cold cereal she's got 'round the kitchen."

He heard the footsteps clomp away, imagined Luke with his gangly height and big feet that promised at least another few inches. Everyone kept telling the boy he ought to go out for basketball, Kurt included, but Luke was beyond not interested. He had a ton of little Lego bricks in his room, had used them to build a small city that took up most of the floor space. It had everything from a bridge to a stadium to an apartment house to something that looked like a medieval castle, and it was an account of it that Junior wouldn't put his clean folded clothes on his bed anymore and left them just outside the door.

She came in a few minutes later with a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice balanced on a cookie sheet. "You slept right through dinner and everything. You wake up at all during the night?"

"I don't think so," Ennis said, grabbing for the orange juice and draining half of it in one gulp. The spit was thick and dry in his mouth.

He got up, stumbled off to the bathroom, came back and tossed down the rest of the orange juice. "Could I have some more of this, please? And some of them pills too."

"Lizzie just drank the rest of the orange juice in the refrigerator."

"All right, I'll take water, then. Do you 'member where I put my cigarettes?"

"You have the flu, you had a temperature of one hundred and one yesterday afternoon, and you want your cigarettes?"

"I figure it's better to just be sick than t'be sick and nearly goin' out of my mind."

"Daddy, you know you're not allowed to smoke in the house."

"So I'll go on the porch."

"You think that's a good idea?"

"I can still walk, Junior. Should probably take a shower as well." He could feel the dried sweat on his back.


	3. Chapter 3

He stepped in the shower and began to run the soap down his chest, over his heart that didn't have one goddamn bit of sense and was still beating too fast. Four or five days to live, like hell. What was he supposed to die of, not being able to keep down some cold cereal? Another fucked-up fever dream, thoughts swimming around in his head at night and bumping into each other like blind fish.

He and Jack had caught one single fish in all their years of saying they were taking off to go fishing, a sorry-looking half-starved trout that seemed to let a sigh of relief through its gills when it stopped flailing on the end of the line and died. "Damn ugly fish," Jack said, prying open its mouth and pulling out the hook. "Reckon we put it out of its misery." Ugly or not, though, it tasted good cooked over the fire and settled in Ennis's stomach like it was finally at rest.

He was ill at ease. It had been his idea to get some use out of the poles, hearing _You didn't go up there to fish!_ as they cast their lines and sat and waited._ It ain't true, it ain't true, see, Alma, it ain't true, damn you._

"Lureen ever wonder about you not bringing home any fish?" he asked Jack.

"Hell no, I just tell her that we ate 'em all, or that I gave 'em to you because I didn't wanna bother to keep 'em packed in ice all the way back to Texas." Jack ate the last bite of his half of the fish and set the plate aside on the ground. "T'tell you the truth, I don't think she's even half listening to me when I tell her, she's – " he raised both his shoulders and his eyes " – on the phone, or adding somethin' up, or sitting on the couch paintin' her fingernails."

Ennis made himself swallow what was left in his mouth, lit a cigarette and stared off down the mountain.

_Jack Nasty_ – like Alma could talk, how'd she manage to get married again so damn fast after the divorce? For all he knew there'd been some kind of nasty going on in Monroe's office after work…it was no good, he knew damn well that she'd been faithful to him the whole time, too worried about supporting any more children to risk it, even if she'd wanted to.

Hell, there hadn't been much for her to complain about, he'd worked more or less steady all the years they'd been married and always been good to the girls, never hit them when he drank too much or even hollered at them. So every once in a while he'd took off to the mountains for a few days to be with Jack. Wasn't like he had some other woman in Riverton where everyone could see him going in and out of her place and talk about it over some beers.

"Ennis?" Jack had moved over to sit beside him, blue eyes searching Ennis's face. "Hey, you all right?"

"Fine," he grunted.

"Look like you – "

"I said I'm _fine,_ Jack, now will you fuckin' let me be?" He went off into the tent because he knew Jack would follow him, knew it would be a couple of minutes or less before Jack would come in and rest Ennis's head on his chest, stroke his hair, whisper to him, and storming off and away was the only way he knew how to get it. Sex he could get easy – barely had to look at Jack that way before the two of them were shoving down their jeans and kissing like they were trying to eat each other – but this he couldn't ask for, had to wait until Jack came to give it to him, in tents and under trees and once in the room of a cheap motel when they'd been apart from each other for the last four years. The only way he could ask was to leave.

It smelled like damp inside the tent, and like the sex they'd had last night.

Jack opened the flap a minute later, took off his hat and kicked off his boots and lay down next to Ennis. "You know I can't let you be, friend."

Ennis held his breath, and a second later he felt his head being gently lifted and set down on top of Jack's heartbeat. He felt the thick fingers running through his hair. "Alma knows 'bout us."

He could feel Jack tense beneath him. "You sure?"

"Started yellin' at each other last Thanksgiving – she put some note on my fishin' pole once, t'see if it was still there later. 'Course it was. Called you Jack Nasty."

"Shit." The finger stopped running and he felt the palm rest above his ear. "Shit, Ennis, she gonna tell the judge?"

"What?"

"They can stop you seein' your girls if they know 'bout us – maybe they can make me have to move away from Bobby, too, I don't know. If Alma goes into court and tells the judge, they can say you ain't fit to parent your girls and make sure you stay away from 'em."

Ennis sat up. "How do you know?"

"I – I heard it somewhere, I don't remember where." He was looking at Ennis like he was looking straight into his eyes, telling the whole truth, but it was the forehead he was looking at, Ennis could tell. He didn't want to think about why that was, and didn't care, until later on that night when he couldn't sleep. He could see his girls away from him, getting bigger and grown-up without him, Monroe hovering around like he was their real daddy.

"Jesus, Jack, they're my girls. I don't know what the hell I'd do without 'em. What'll I have left if some judge takes 'em away?"

It was the wrong question to ask, and the answer was lying in front of him, but he couldn't take it back, like he couldn't ask for Jack to hold him.

"Look, bud, forget I said it. Alma ain't gonna take your girls away. If she was gonna do it, she'd a done it by now. Besides, you could just tell the judge that she was lyin' and makin' up stories because she hates your guts. How'd he be able to say that she was the one tellin' the truth? Only people who can say she's right are you and me."

He sat up and pulled Ennis to him, lay the two of them back down, stayed still until Ennis was falling asleep.

"Hey, Ennis?" he could hear Jack say as sleep began to cloud what was real.

"Hmm?"

"She won't do it, but if she does, and if you can't get 'em back no matter how hard you try, say you'll come away with me somewhere."

"Hell, fine, 'll come 'way with you s'mewhere," he muttered, and fell asleep with his head still on Jack's heartbeat.

Of course, Alma never did try to take his girls away, and all these years later he knew that had been his blessing and his curse. Mostly he knew that if she had, he'd have kept seeing Jack in the middle of nowhere a couple of times a year, but every once in a while something tugged at his mind and he wondered if it would have been the final push into the life he wanted and had never, ever, let himself have, for fear that the tire iron would descend upon him and knock him into a world sure to punish him for his sins.


End file.
